kyloson.com
OG hacker, husband, and all 'round scallywag. Science nerd, music nerd, book nerd, general nerd. Founder of Kyloson Tech (https://kyloson.com) and proprietor of The Solo Admin blog (https://thesoloadmin.com). Holding it down in the STL.
5,485 posts
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8,831 following
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9/One of the reasons I love working in tech is its potential to help solve problems and elevate ppl. Not in some fanciful future on Mars, but right here on Earth, TODAY. Wherever there's potential to make lives a little better, that will always be the side I'm on.
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8/End of the day, the hypocrisy is what galls me the most. Ivy League grads with trust funds calling themselves "self made". Tearing apart our - OUR - govt. while relying on it as your "lender of last resort". Planning missions to Mars while creating the very conditions that would necessitate them.
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7/Unlike his fellow robber barons, he's in a unique position to sweep the few crumbs allowed for the rest of us into his own pocket too, gutting social programs while leaving his contracts untouched. DOGE is capturing the whole of govt. right now, as we sit back helpless to do anything about it.
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6/Musk's companies reap $billions in govt. largesse - loans, contracts, tax breaks - not available to most. As the competition closes in, he wants to shut off the tap to prevent anyone else from benefiting. Even his Mars vision relies on govt. propping up SpaceX while he figures it out.
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5/Conservatives to this day still rail against Obama's "you didn't build that" speech (www.factcheck.org/2012/07/you-...), completely ignoring the bountiful harvest they've all reaped at society's expense, with Musk being the biggest hypocrite of the bunch. He really IS a repugnant human being.
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4/Manifest Destiny was unbridled wealth and expansion for the few, oppression and death for the many. Their ideas of a Manifest Destiny for space have a similar feel - no laws, and only the worthy get a seat. After all, there's no room for "useless eaters" on Mars. There's really nothing new here.
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3/Bezos, Musk, Andreesen, Thiel - I think they're all bummed they missed the good ol' days of the 1800s when a white man could by God run his business without any pesky laws or regs getting in the way (he could also murder minorities and women with impunity, but I'm sure that's beside the point).
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2/What struck me this morning? Jeff Bezos' "1000 Einsteins" quote (www.sciencealert.com/bezoss-visio...). Adam makes the 1000% correct point (since we're throwing around nonsensical stats) that Bezos is completely dismissing any potential Einsteins that might be alive RIGHT NOW, living in poverty.
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Exactamundo. It's pervasive from the top down, esp. including the DOGE wrecking crew - a desire to circumvent laws (not suggestions) around access, security, and data retention. The NLRB debacle is a prime example of this - krebsonsecurity.com/2025/04/whis....
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2/The hubris of believing the private sector is always better, combined with the grifter-ish nature of the inner circle and hangers-on, expect a steady stream of these stories with the same mistakes being repeated ad infinitum.
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9/Make it a point to step outside your bubble - we all have one - and put yourself in someone else's shoes. God forbid, maybe talk to strangers. Not as a scientist, but as a friend. A simple "Hello, how are you?" can be enough to start a conversation. That sounds pretty heroic to me. 😏
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8/My philosophy? Stopandsmelltherosesism - dedicate time to go out and observe the beauty and wonder of the world around you. Visit a forest and LISTEN - you're in the middle of a non-stop symphony of life. And maybe most importantly, step away from the computer and interact with your fellow humans.
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7/But here's what's missing from this logic: life, in all its forms - humans included - is amazing and precious. While we debate theoretical superhuman AGI, we still can't replicate the beauty and simplicity of a living cell. There's a lesson in our short life span; we weren't meant to live forever.
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6/If you truly believe in the ends of humanity on the verge of extinction, then ANY means are justified. From this, it's also a small leap to the "smartest" ppl subverting the will of everyone, "for their own good" - The White Man's Burden on a galactic scale (99% of longtermists are white men).
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5/It's not debatable that AI and crypto - 2 faves of these groups - consume massive resources for the benefit of a privileged few. Nothing heroic there, hence the need to assign a greater purpose allowing its practitioners to be heroes again. Think of the platitudes for the savior of humanity!
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4/We may never solve global hunger and poverty, nor prevent suffering. Food banks and Habitat for Humanity aren't "sexy" like colonizing space or battling an evil supercomputer, but for men who are comfortable in their own skin, there's a joy in helping others, ESPECIALLY when no one else knows.
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3/Adolescent boys are also some of the cruelest little trolls, quick to remind our buddies how badly they suck at baseball IRL. It's not much of a leap to the longtermists who can't play baseball - instead, they will save humanity! It's playing the hero mixed with a God complex. Here's why it's sad.
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2/Ladies, I'll let you in on a secret - as boys, most men (myself included) dreamt of being heroes. When we play army, we're not the private taking orders; we're the general, moving troops around the battlefield. In baseball, we're not the 3rd base coach, we're hitting the game winning home run.
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Dude, the site is just super cool. I thought I'd try it out on my phone this morning, thinking I'd see a "best viewed on" message. Instead, even my crappy low-end Android performed surprisingly well! LOVE the navigation joystick.
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4/Bottom line, make sure you understand - as much as possible - the tradeoffs you're making early on. And it's never a bad idea to "local fork" your framework to a known state that's not at the whims of maintainers. Keep a local copy! You never know when your temporary fix will become legacy code. 😏
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3/But I made the decision at the time for the reason everyone does - speed. If you don't have existing CSS laying around, you'll spend a long time building the basics, much less form/menu/button styling needed to look modern. jQuery was a different tradeoff and the easier of the 2 to replace.
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2/The main point is simplicity. Choosing a framework is not free. Once you go down that road, it's very difficult to change direction later, and you often become trapped in the limitations of said libraries. I made a decision to use Fomantic/jQuery vs HTML/vanilla JS and I hope it doesn't bite me.
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Me neither. Most of our problems have long-term causes requiring long-term solutions - investment in the right places, plans for creating jobs/dealing with crime and poverty (I believe these are closely related) and making STL a destination again. We do have one of the COOLEST nat. monuments, imho.
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8/I could go on all day, but instead I encourage you to read Becker's book instead. Salud! 💙📚
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7/Viewed in that light, wealth inequality and the carbon footprint of massive crypto/AI data centers aren't the problem. Making sure future humans can live on Mars is the REAL issue! Forget about Amazon's treatment of employees, or tech's monopolies. There are hypothetical future humans to save! 💙📚
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6/To tech's carpenters, every world problem is a nail to be solved by the hammer of AGI - www.technologyreview.com/2024/09/28/1.... It will just, ya know, SOLVE it [handwave]. The real problem isn't climate change or global hunger, it's controlling the AGI that will rule us (owned by OpenAI ofc). 💙📚
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5/If that sounds insane, here's a concrete example - Bezos' Blue Origin space co. is really about the need to move humanity out to the stars to prevent "stasis" - stopping growth - on Earth - www.theverge.com/2016/6/1/118.... Siphoning $billions in govt. contracts is totally just a side effect! 💙📚
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4/The EA PoV is ultimately that ANY decision you make now is justified if it could help some potential future human 000s of years from now. No, I'm not kidding. Coincidentally, those decisions tend to be the same ones that make the decider fantastically wealthy at the cost of CURRENT humans! 💙📚
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3/EA cloaks its true self in "smart philanthropy", and I'll give 'em this - they know how to shape the narrative. This word salad - en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effecti... - is a prime example. Whether they admit it or not, EA is the ultimate "ends justify the means" lifestyle for the ultrarich. 💙📚
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2/That Messrs. Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and their ilk exude arrogance like, well, only a billionaire could, is well known, but the lunacy they use to justify their overcompensating vanity projects (rockets, boys? Hmmm...) will make you grind your teeth. Let's talk about Effective Altruism, or EA. 💙📚
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Nothing against farmers from Bernie. Some of my best friends are farmers. 😜
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3/My father-in-law retired as a mechanic from United/TWA as the city was bleeding out. I'm sure we're no different from a lot of Midwestern cities, but I sure would like to see STL city regain some of its former glory somehow.
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2/Maybe a better point, it feels like perceptions of St. Louis make it easier for the legislature to disregard MO voters (although they probably would anyway) on issues of local control. Growing up in rural MO, I can say definitively a farmer from Bernie has no idea what St. Louis needs.
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1/You're right that it's not corruption related and wasn't a great inclusion. Sometimes my thought process gets scattered, especially when thinking about MO politics. Here's a great article on that topic specifically - boltsmag.org/missouri-sta.... It makes me sad that STL has lost so much.
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4/Their 2005 trial provided an overdue measure of justice for the families impacted by their actions, which have been called the worst corruption in the NYPD's history, which is a high bar to top. For fans of mafia history - or true crime in general - Cannell's book is highly recommended. 💙📚
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3/For those unfamiliar, Eppolito and Caracappa, in their roles as ranking NYPD detectives, sold information to - and committed murders for - psychopathic Lucchese boss "Gaspipe" Casso, who became boss after the Commission trial took down the heads of the NYC families in the mid-80s. 💙📚
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2/IMHO, the best mafia books are written by reporters - e.g. Selwayn Raab's "Five Families" - and Cannell, a former journalist and editor at the #NYT, proves the rule. The "just the facts, ma'am" style serves well here, as Cannell details one of the last major trials of the NYC mafia era. 💙📚